CQ2 ’16 Showed SSDs are Ahead of Schedule!

It is now very clear that client SSDs going into Notebook PC’s are tracking fantastically, with expected attach rates to be around 34% for 2016, or over 1/3 of the market! Obviously, pricing has been a big factor in this adoption. A 128GB SSD is well under the price of a 500GB HDD, with 256GB continuing to drop in price each month. PCIe modules are also gaining momentum outside of Apple, with estimates putting volumes at 2 million units or so (up from zero just a short time ago).

On the enterprise SSD side, although SATA SSDs still dominate both hyperscale and system OEMs from a unit volume perspective (3.2 of the 4.07 million units shipped in CQ2 ’16), SAS SSDs saw a tremendous jump in capacity shipped in CQ2 ’16. Unit volume rose only 5.4%, but exabytes shipped increased a whopping 100.5% from the previous quarter. The move to higher capacities (like 3.84TB and even a few 15TB) is real. The storage networking companies taking SAS SSD solutions have embraced these higher capacity devices (helped by declining prices) at a surprising rate.

One thing to note – it will be interesting to see how the flattening of SSD pricing over the coming quarters (due to NAND supply tightness) will impact SSD purchases – on both the client and enterprise sides. One thing is for sure though, if the NAND supply stays at an acceptable level, SSD shipments should only continue to increase – but at what rate??